In Character
by hawkerin
Summary: It was the most out of character episode ever. Whether you ship Rose with the Doctor or not, it was simply completely out of place in the series. This is my fix.


Rose stared at the fireplace that had just rotated around the wall, taking the Doctor with it. She didn't dare touch it just yet, in case it took her too, but she walked a bit closer.

"Always tells me not to wander off, but he can disappear whenever he likes," she grumbled.

"This happen a lot then?" Mickey asked her.

"Pretty much, yeah," she sighed. "Doctor!" Rose shouted as the wall turned again to reveal the Doctor with something dressed like a huge porcelain doll or something.

The Doctor ran away from the thing to grab a tool from the nearby wall and blasted it with some kind of gas. The thing froze in place and the time travellers relaxed for the moment.

'Excellent. Ice gun," Mickey cheered.

"Fire extinguisher," the Doctor corrected as he moved to inspect his attacker more closely.

"What is that thing, Doctor?" Rose wondered, looking over his shoulder.

"Some kind of droid from the ship," he replied distractedly.

"What, this ship?" she asked.

"So why is it dressed like that?" Mickey wondered.

"Field trip to France. Some kind of basic camouflage protocol. Nice needlework, shame about the face," he commented and pulled away the mask to reveal a clear head, filled with metal gears and cogs. "Oh, you are beautiful! No, really, you are. You're gorgeous! Look at that. Space age clockwork, I love it. I've got chills! Listen, seriously, I mean this from the heart, and, by the way, count those, it would be a crime, it would be an act of vandalism to disassemble you. But that won't stop me."

The Doctor pulled out his sonic to deactivate it, but a sudden burst of light surrounded it as it disappeared.

"Short range teleport. Can't have got far. Could still be on board," he groaned.

"Well, if you want to find it, why are you heading back towards that thing?" Rose asked when he walked back toward the fireplace.

"I'll be right back. Don't go looking for it!" the Doctor instructed as he activated the switch to take him back to France.

Rose rolled her eyes and picked up the fire extinguisher that the Doctor had dropped, turning to explore the ship.

"He said not to look for it," Mickey argued.

"Yeah, he did," she replied, nodding to the second one on the wall.

Mickey shrugged and picked it up, ready to follow his friend. She had a couple years experience with this kind of thing after all.

"Now you're getting it."

-

Back in France, the Doctor found himself in a slightly different bedroom. It was still clearly the same time period, but the decor had changed quite a bit. Gone were the dolls and such, replaced with more adult style furnishings.

"Reinette? Just checking you're okay," he called out.

Exploring the room a bit, he found a harp and plucked a string softly. Someone cleared their throat behind him, and he turned to see a blonde young lady.

"Oh. Hello. Er, I was just looking for Reinette. This is still her room, isn't it? I've been away, not sure how long," the Doctor tried to explain his sudden appearance in a lady's room.

"Reinette! We're ready to go," a voice called from the hallway.

"Go to the carriage, Mother. I will join you there," she called back before turning to address the Doctor. "It is customary, I think, to have an imaginary friend only during one's childhood. You are to be congratulated on your persistence."

"Reinette! Well. Goodness, how you've grown," he stuttered in surprise. This was certainly not what he was expecting when he came back to check on the frightened little girl he had met a few moments ago.

"And you do not appear to have aged a single day. That is tremendously impolite of you," she said, edging closer to him.

"Right, yes, sorry. Listen, lovely to catch up, but better be off, eh? Don't want your mother finding you up here with a strange man, do we?" he rambled, backing away from the predatory look in her eye and towards his door out of there.

"Strange? How could you be a stranger to me? I've known you since I was seven years old," she argued.

"Well, you've known me for all of five minutes since then, I suppose," he conceded.

"You seem to be flesh and blood, at any rate, but this is absurd. Reason tells me you cannot be real," she said, running her hand across the lapels of his jacket.

The Doctor tensed at the uninvited contact from her and moved closer to the switch that would take him back to the spaceship. "Oh, you never want to listen to reason," he mumbled.

"Mademoiselle! Your mother grows impatient," a man called to her.

"A moment!" she replied and turned back to look at the Doctor, who was squirming uncomfortably at her proximity. "So many questions. So little time."

He gasped when the young lady pulled on his jacket and kissed him. He flailed for a moment, but quickly pulled himself free of her. "No! No, no, no, don't… don't… don't do that," he protested, making her look at him in shock for a moment.

"Mademoiselle Poisson!" the servant called as he entered the room, but the young lady ran past him and out the door. He was left wondering what the Doctor was doing in Reinette's room.

"Poisson? Reinette Poisson? No! No, no, no, no, no way. Reinette Poisson? Later Madame Etoiles? Later still mistress of Louis the Fifteenth, uncrowned Queen of France? Well, I suppose that answers a bit for her behaviour," the Doctor realized.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"Just came to, uh, fix the fireplace," he told the man and pulled the switch.

He found himself back on the odd spaceship, but saw no sign of his human companions around. He grumbled at everyone's tendency to ignore rule one, and went off in search of them before something bad happened.

The Doctor found a horse that had wandered through one of the many doorways that led back to different places in France, but couldn't seem to find his companions anywhere.

-  
"Maybe it wasn't a real heart," Mickey suggested, horrified by the things they had found as they explored the ship.

"Course it was a real heart," she sighed.

"Is this like normal for you? Is this an average day?"

"Life with the Doctor, Mickey? No more average days," she informed him, as if he should have realized that before asking to come along with them. Really, she hadn't wanted the third wheel anyway, but the Doctor had insisted, so she went along with it for now.

"I can't believe how okay you are with all this weird stuff. It's France again. We can see France," Mickey commented as they stopped by a large window.

"I think we're looking through a mirror," Rose told him.

"Blimey, look at this guy. Who does he think he is?" Mickey wondered as a gentleman in very fancy clothes entered the room they were watching.

"The King of France," the Doctor answered as he approached them finally.

"Oh, here's trouble. What you been up to?" Rose asked, glad that the Doctor had found them again before the inevitable disaster struck. After all, they had to tell him about what they'd found out so far on the ship.

"Oh, this and that. Became the imaginary friend of a future French aristocrat, picked a fight with a clockwork man. Oh, and I met a horse," he replied with a nod to the white horse that was following him down the corridor.

"What's a horse doing on a spaceship?" Mickey asked incredulously.

"Mickey, what's pre-Revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Get a little perspective. See these? They're all over the place. On every deck. Gateways to history. But not just any old history," the Doctor explained. At that point, Reinette entered the room in front of them and curtsied to the King. "Hers. Time windows deliberately arranged along the life of one particular woman. A spaceship from the fifty first century stalking a woman from the eighteenth. Why?"

"Who is she?" Rose wondered.

"Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, known to her friends as Reinette. One of the most accomplished women who ever lived."

"So has she got plans of being the Queen, then?" Rose asked, guessing that was why she seemed to be chatting up the King.

"No, he's already got a Queen. She's got plans of being his mistress," the Doctor explained.

"Oh, I get it. Camilla."

"I think this is the night they met. The night of the Yew Tree ball. In no time at flat, she'll get herself established as his official mistress, with her own rooms at the palace. Even her own title. Madame de Pompadour," the Doctor continued.

"The Queen must have loved her," Rose scoffed.

"Oh, she did. They get on very well," he countered.

"The King's wife and the King's girlfriend?" Mickey questioned in surprise.

"France. It's a different planet."

The king left her alone in the room, then everyone was surprised when one of the dressed up robots appeared in the room with Reinette. The Doctor grabbed one of the fire extinguishers that Rose and Mickey had kept close just in case and the time travellers pushed through the mirror and into the room.

"Hello, Reinette. Hasn't time flown?" the Doctor announced as he sprayed the droid to freeze it once again.

"Fireplace man!" she gasped.

The robot creaked a bit and Mickey asked, "What's it doing?"

"Switching back on. Melting the ice," the Doctor replied.

"And then what?"

"Then it kills everyone in the room. Focuses the mind, doesn't it?" he answered as his mind whirled to find a plan to solve what was going on here. "Who are you? Identify yourself."

When the machine didn't respond, he told Reinette, "Order it to answer me."

"Why should it listen to me?" she asked.

"I don't know. It did when you were a child. Let's see if you've still got it."

"Answer his question. Answer any and all questions put to you," she demanded.

"I am repair droid seven," it replied.

"What happened to the ship, then? There was a lot of damage," the Doctor asked it.

"Ion storm. Eighty two percent systems failure."

"That ship hasn't moved in over a year. What's taken you so long?"

"We did not have the parts."

Mickey scoffed, "Always comes down to that, doesn't it? The parts."

"What's happened to the crew? Where are they?" the Doctor continued.

"We did not have the parts," it repeated.

"There should have been over fifty people on your ship. Where did they go?"

"We did not have the parts."

Rose gagged as she realized what it meant, but the Doctor hadn't seen what she and Mickey had found.

"Fifty people don't just disappear. Where. Oh. You didn't have the parts, so you used the crew," he reasoned finally.

"The crew?" Mickey asked, still not quite connecting the parts they had seen around the ship with what was going on.

"We found a camera with an eye in it, and there was a heart wired into the machinery," Rose explained, looking a bit ill at the thought.

"It was just doing what it was programmed to. Repairing the ship any way it can, with whatever it could find. No one told it the crew weren't on the menu. What did you say the flight deck smelt of?"

"Someone cooking," Rose replied quietly.

"Flesh plus heat. Barbeque. But what are you doing here? You've opened up time windows. That takes colossal energy. Why come here? You could have gone to your repair yard. Instead you come to eighteenth century France? Why?" the Doctor asked.

"One more part is required," it replied, turning to Reinette.

"Then why haven't you taken it?"

"She is incomplete."

"What, so, that's the plan, then. Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?"

Rose couldn't see why they had to come back in time at all though. With fifty crew members on board, they should have had all the same parts available. "Why her? You've got all of history to choose from. Why specifically her?"

"We are the same."

"We are not the same. We are in no sense the same," Reinette protested, clearly offended by the remark.

"We are the same," it insisted.

"Get out of here. Get out of here this instant!" she shouted angrily.

"Reinette, no!" the Doctor shouted, trying to prevent the inevitable, but the droid had already teleported away before they could finish questioning it. "It's back on the ship," he groaned.

"Should we go after it?" Rose asked.

"Knowing what they did to the crew, we should be careful. And these fire extinguishers don't stop them for long. Stick together, just hang on a minute," he told them, concerned that the repair droids might decide that they needed a few more parts. "Reinette, you're going to have to trust me. I need to find out what they're looking for. There's only one way I can do that. It won't hurt a bit."

Rose and Mickey watched as the Doctor put his fingers against her temples and closed his eyes. Rose knew that he was checking her mind telepathically. He had done it for her a few times after they'd run into other telepathic threats. He had even helped heal some of the damage caused by the psychograft on New Earth. She was a bit uneasy about him doing this with the pretty aristocrat, since she had always found it a bit intimate when he had done it with her. But he said that it was the only way to find out what he needed to know.

"Fireplace man, you are inside my mind," Reinette gasped.

"Oh dear, Reinette. You've had some cowboys in here," he mumbled as he searched for what he needed to know.

"You are in my memories. You walk among them," she said as she felt what he was doing.

"If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door and close it. I won't look. Oh, actually there's a door just there. You might want to cl- Oh, actually, several," he told her, clearly uncomfortable with the imagery she was sharing with him.

"To walk among the memories of another living soul. Do you ever get used to this?" she asked him excitedly.

"I don't make a habit of it," he grumbled.

"How can you resist?" she wondered, clearly enjoying the closeness this involved.

"What age are you?" the Doctor interrupted.

"So impertinent a question so early in the conversation. How promising," she flirted, making Rose shift uncomfortably from where they were waiting.

"No, not my question, theirs. You're twenty three and for some reason, that means you're not old enough. Sorry, you might find old memories reawakening. Side effect," he explained, trying to redirect things back to the problem at hand.

"Oh, such a lonely childhood."

"It'll pass. Stay with me," he told her.

"Oh, Doctor. So lonely. So very, very alone."

"What do you mean, alone? You've never been alone in your life. When did you start calling me Doctor?" he realized, opening his eyes to look at her.

"Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it?" Reinette asked.

He pulled his hands away from her face quickly. "How did you do that?" he demanded.

"A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction. Oh, Doctor. My lonely Doctor," she told him.

"Should have had my shields up. You shouldn't have been able to do that," he responded, the tension in his shoulders apparent to everyone in the room.

"Dance with me," Reinette invited.

"Dance?! There are murderous robots running around that want to cut off your head!" Rose shouted, reminding the King's mistress that she was not in fact alone with the Doctor.

Reinette glanced over at the other two people in surprise and the Doctor took the opportunity to jump back into action and away from the awkward situation.

"Quite right. So, these droids want to know how old you are. Why would that matter? And why do they seem to think that you are the one they need so badly?" he rambled.

"How old is the ship?" Rose suggested.

"Computers! That's what we need," he exclaimed and dragged Rose and Mickey with him back through the mirror, shutting it firmly behind them.

Once they were back on the ship, the Doctor took a moment to lean against the wall and closed his eyes. Rose and Mickey glanced at each other nervously, he hardly ever showed weakness, except right after his regeneration.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" Rose questioned.

"Sorry. That was. She didn't know, but- In telepathic races, what she just did was considered beyond rude. I was just trying to look at the surface of her mind, to see what they wanted. She pulled me in deeper, then barged into my head uninvited. Just give me a minute," he told them.

Rose felt a bit silly for being jealous earlier. Clearly the Doctor had no interest in reciprocating the woman's advances towards him. For one thing, he barely knew her, and if he was so worried about her withering and dying so soon, this long dead aristocrat with an established history certainly had no place in his life.

"Right, so we need to find the ship's computer. They're robots, yeah? Can we change their programming or shut them down or something?" Mickey asked when the Doctor seemed to have calmed down.

"Brilliant, Mickey! No sense fighting them head on when we can just change their orders," the Doctor beamed at him. "Let's find the main computer."

The trio made their way to the bridge controls, locking the door just in case. The Doctor sat down in the middle chair, looking at the computer logs of the crew to see what he could find. Mickey sat next to him at another computer terminal and started his own search.

"Doctor, why can't I find the repair protocols? I mean, there's gotta be a list of rules for these droids to follow, right? So where are they?" Mickey asked.

The Doctor turned away from the crew logs to look over his shoulder at the other screen.

"Hmm. Just a minute," he said, typing a few more commands into the computer Mickey was using. "Something important is missing here."

At that, he dove beneath the console and opened the panels to expose the circuitry underneath. He tried to ignore the pieces of the crew that had been wired into it all as he analyzed where everything was. It was obvious when he spotted it, knowing that he should have guessed all along.

"The command circuit. It was damaged in the ion storm. That's why they want her brain. For some reason, they think that her brain will replace their command circuit as soon as she's old enough," the Doctor told them.

"Tell you what, Doctor. I can see why they're the same," Rose said, calling him back to the main screen. "The ship is called Madame de Pompadour. Didn't you say that was her title?"

The Doctor groaned as it all fell into place. "The droids, missing their command circuit, bypassed all of the standard Asimov coding and used the crew to repair the ship. Not knowing where to find a new command circuit, they look at what the ship is and decide that they need another Madame de Pompadour brain to control the bloody thing and start popping holes back to the only other one that they know of and are waiting until her milometer matches theirs to take it."

"So what do we do then? Can we replace the circuit and fix it so they don't kill anyone anymore?" Mickey asked.

"Circuit, circuit, circuit… I think I might have the right kind on the TARDIS. Right, you two stay here while I go get what we need to fix this," he instructed.

"But what if those things get a hold of you?" Rose argued.

"I found a bottle of this in the corner. Multigrade anti-oil. Pour this into their clockworks and nothing will move. Should at least buy me some time. Stay here this time, please. And keep that door closed," he told them and dashed back toward the TARDIS.

"So, we just sitting here, then?" Mickey asked as Rose spun in the chair that the Doctor had vacated.

"S'pose we could look in the computers a bit more," she suggested. "This looks like information about the ship itself. Lots of gaps in it, but from what I can see, the ship is thirty seven years old. Think that means they only want her brain when it's thirty seven years old?"

"Probably. He seemed pretty shaken up back there," Mickey said, not used to seeing the Doctor vulnerable.

"Yeah. He said that was the only way to find out what the droids were looking for, but going into another person's head like that is a bit, well, personal. He's done it for me before, when some aliens might have hurt my mind. Helped heal some damage from this thing called a psychograft before. But I trust him, and like he said, you can sort of close off your thoughts for some privacy. He seemed pretty uncomfortable doing that with a stranger, and he said what she did was really rude."

"Think he's ok now though?"

"Seems to be. Or at least he'll hold it together until this is over and deal with it later," she told him.

The Doctor made his way through the corridors as quickly as possible. Yes, he often brought his companions into dangerous situations and Rose had proven that she could take care of herself most of the time, but Mickey was new to all of this. These things had dissected over fifty people that were used to working with them and should have known how to shut them down. He couldn't help but be worried what they would do if they decided that they needed more parts right now.

He found what he needed in the box full of spare parts that he kept under the grating in the console room. Tossing a few tools that he might need into his pockets as well, the Doctor started back to where his friends were hiding. He didn't run into any droids on his way back and decided that they must be rushing to find the right time window now that they saw some interference with their plan. But they hadn't attacked yet, so he hoped they could fix things before they were recognized as a threat.

"Right then, got what we need," he announced as he rushed into the room and dove straight for the panel he had opened earlier.

"Doctor, the ship is thirty seven years old. Why didn't they just open a time window to when she was thirty seven?" Rose asked as he worked.

"With the amount of damage to these circuits, they did well to hit the right century. Trial and error after that. Alright, so circuit is installed, but we need to do some programming to fill in the missing information," the Doctor told them.

The Time Lord was typing faster than either of them could follow, replacing commands that had been erased by the damage to the ship, but he had to complete all of it before he sent the corrections to the repair droids or they might catch on and try to stop them. A flashing light on the console caught Mickey's eye.

"Doctor, I think we have a problem," Mickey announced.

"Bit busy, what is it?"

"A message from one of the droids. Looks like it's telling the others that it found the right one. Is there a way to recall all of them to the ship or something?" he suggested.

"Could do, but it might alert them to what we're doing. And, well there's a bit of a hitch that it would teleport them all straight onto the main bridge," the Doctor replied as he continued his furious typing.

"That would be this room, yeah?" Rose guessed.

"Yup."

"Better to have us dealing with them though than a castle full of old French snobs though, isn't it?" Mickey suggested.

"Oh definitely. Hang on, need to find the switch to turn off their teleport once they're here or they'll just go straight back. Okay, now look for the recharge command under the repair subroutines and activate it, then grab those fire extinguishers," the Doctor instructed.

"How many are there?" Rose asked.

"Looks like three?" Mickey guessed as he worked his way through the systems.

"I'm going to need a few more minutes to finish this programming once they get here. So, stay alive and hopefully this works," he told them.

"You've got it, Doctor," Rose replied, hefting the ice gun and bracing herself for a fight.

"Right, here we go," Mickey said, not quite as confidently.

In a flash of light, three droids appeared in front of them and looked at their surroundings in confusion for a moment. Mickey picked up the other weapon, fumbling a bit with nervousness, but moving to mirror Rose's position in their face off.

"Teleports are disabled," the Doctor announced and returned to the task of reprogramming their command circuit.

Rose shot the droid closest to her with the fire extinguisher and it froze in place for a moment, but was quickly melting the ice to reactivate, so it wouldn't be out of the way for long. Mickey ran closer to another droid to freeze it as well, but it anticipated the move and knocked the gun from his hands. It grabbed him and held a knife to his throat as Rose ducked around the frozen robot to avoid the third.

"Any time now, Doctor!" she shouted.

"Help!" Mickey grunted, holding the weapon away from himself, but not getting very far against the machine.

"Got it!" the Doctor exclaimed, hitting the last button to send the upgraded files to the repair droids.

All of the droids paused in place for a moment as they downloaded the new information. The time travellers breathed a sigh of relief when they dropped their arms and moved to the charging area in the corner.

"Right. Time to shut down all those time windows, set the autopilot to send this ship to the repair yard and then, we'll be off," the Doctor told his companions.

"Is that girl ok then?" Rose asked.

"Well, they didn't come back with her brain and this is all shutting down nicely now, so I expect she should be fine," he answered.

"Probably spent the rest of her life looking around corners for those things though, eh?" Mickey asked.

"Well, since we stopped them, don't think it really matters. Being a little extra cautious in life never hurt anyone."

They were back on the TARDIS and Mickey had gone to bed, but Rose found the Doctor in the library. He was staring blankly into the fireplace, as if the flames could answer the mysteries of the universe. She sat down next to him and thought quietly about what to say for a few minutes.

"Are you alright?" she finally asked, startling him for a moment.

"I'm always alright," he answered with a shrug.

Rose hated it when he said that, knowing it meant the exact opposite really, but he wanted to show a brave face. She twined her fingers with his and squeezed his hand in support.

"I should have had my shields up when I did that. It was stupid really, but humans shouldn't be able to do that and it gets so lonely in my head sometimes. I wanted to feel another presence for a little while," he explained, looking at the floor.

"Are you really so lonely as she said?" Rose wondered. She had hoped that her presence had helped with that ever since their first trip and her promise of 'there's me.'

"No matter how many companions I bring with me, human lives are so fleeting. In the blink of an eye, everyone moves on in their life, or dies from the dangerous places that I've brought them. And I'm all alone again."

"I'm never leaving you, Doctor. Not as long as I can help it. As for feeling another presence in your mind, if you want, I can be that for you. Someone safe, that won't take advantage, yeah?" Rose suggested.

"Thank you," he sighed and put an arm around her shoulders as they snuggled together on the couch.

He brushed his fingers lightly over her temple, just feeling her presence, but not going into her mind. They both hummed happily at the feeling of comfort and friendship that it gave them and settled in to watch the fire together for a while.


End file.
